PI: Wario Land: Shake it! Review

"That's what makes Wario Land: Shake It! so remarkable -- the first thing you'll notice is that it's absolutely gorgeous to behold. Its visuals are striking, even disorienting at first glance -- no one makes high-resolution 2D platformers like this anymore, not without cutting corners and using cheap Flash-style trickery to create an illusion of quality animation. The thing is, Shake It! doesn't cheat. Its layered backgrounds and huge character sprites are hand-crafted by none other than Production I.G., the anime studio responsible for the game's intro movie and animated hits like Ghost in the Shell. Wario himself is fully animated through a wide range of actions and motions, as are his foes. Likewise, the game's environments are lush and detailed, with numerous layers of parallax scrolling and tons of visual variety: No two stages use the same theme or graphics."